The field of this disclosure relates to a multi-tier database architecture.
Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) is a widely used platform specification for server programming in the Java™ language. J2EE has been renamed to Java™ EE 5.0 in the newest version of the specification. The previous version was named J2EE 1.4. This discussion will refer to any version of the enterprise editions of Java™ as Java™ EE.
The Java™ EE Platform has additional libraries added to the Java Standard Edition platform that provide functionality to deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, multi-tier Java software, based largely on modular components running on an application server. Typically, large entities using mainframe-scale computing deploy Java™ EE in a multi-tiered architecture.
A multi-tiered structure generally consists of a three-tier structure, although two-tier structures are included for purposes of this discussion. A first tier contains the client. A second, middle or application tier, contains the Java™ EE containers, applications and their services. A third tier contains the enterprise information system, or database, tier, having such components as databases and legacy applications. An application tier Java™ EE application will generally require finding all of the dependencies among components, such as Java™ files, XML files, and Database Objects, such as table, synonym, etc. Finding all of these dependencies may require multiple calls from the application tier to the database tier. These multiple calls make tracking the dependencies and the maintainability of the applications, more difficult and time consuming.